by Jim Rudnick
McDonald nodded. “Sent to Admiral McQueen, yes?” he asked, and that got a response.
“Sir, sent but we are also advised that the admiral is on Anulet with a hunting party, Sir,” back from his Ansible officer.
“Roger that,” McDonald said, “and I want that RIM ID sent as well—why Novertag would have sent a drone to attack the aliens is beyond me—but notify the RIM Confederacy Council clerk of this as well—send her the data too—I’d guess that they’re going to have to answer for that but not here and today,” he said.
He shook his head. “Stay on that alien vessel. They were just attacked, and their force field held off that nuke, and they took out the offending ship on their own. Full, as usual, analytics and archive the lot too,” he said.
As the Coventry and the Whitney were repositioning themselves to flank the space station, he watched the alien ship. Nothing. Not a single thing happened as a result of the attack. At least nothing he could see, nor for that matter that the Wilson could see with all its technology either.
“So, we sit once again,” he said to himself.
#####
It was his first executive committee meeting. Tanner was ready for anything, but he knew today’s meeting would not be a normal one. On his way up, he had followed the seven RIM Navy Provost guards who were escorting Captain Evgeny Pankov of the Novertag ship the Drozir, between them. As the Sword had set down on the Juno navy base landing port, he’d seen the Drozir just a few pads away, and he had watched as this man was escorted off their ship and taken directly to Navy Hall.
He almost smiled to himself and then remembered that a duke would never broadcast what he was thinking to those around him. That was a lesson Helena tried to drill into him, but he replied that it was easier to just look beautiful as a woman, and no man ever thought about anything more than that.
She had laughed at him just an evening ago, and that had made his whole day. The next day, the attack on the alien ship off Ghayth had happened and that was what today’s emergency meeting was all about. All full executive committee members would be in attendance to determine the fate of the two Novertag military officers who had been identified as the responsible parties in the attack on the alien ship.
While Tanner had his doubts, he’d met Captain Pankov once before—almost ten years ago—when the Novertag realm had been bidding on taking over the Ikarians—and their sleeper ship. He’d been in communication back then with Premier Leonid Sigalov, who had pointed the finger to this captain. He’d met that captain too and was not impressed—the man’s bare ambition seemed to overshadow everything else in the man’s life—including his ability to be a starship captain too.
At the fifth floor, the Provost guards marched the Novertag Navy man down the hall, and he followed their lead. At the doorway to the committee meeting room, he saw there were already some members present, and he was greeted with a wave to come in from Admiral McQueen. He followed his lead to the empty seat to sit directly to the admiral’s right at the round table, and he made his smiles and introductions to the rest at the table. To the left of the admiral sat the Master Adept—the new one, he meant—and then the Baroness who smiled at him as she was sipping a glass of something green. To her left was an empty seat with the Doge of Conclusion written on the name holder place card. The Doge of Conclusion must be running late today, Tanner thought. Next to the Doge’s empty seat, the chairman of the RIM Confederacy Council, Chairman Gramsci, sat, and all six of his hands were busy with files, documents, and two tablets. Finally the last seat held the Caliph—Sharia Al Dotsa—who was on Tanner’s right.
Seven members composed of the four largest realms, the official chairman, the vice chairperson, and the RIM Navy head admiral were to determine what would happen to the Novertag officers. The seven members were charged with the duty of meeting as often as might be required to work on items that would be of import to the whole Confederacy Council itself.
“Now, I have a seat on this committee,” Tanner said to himself. “And now, we have an issue that needs our counsel and advice. For the good of the Confederacy.”
He looked over at the far wall at the Novertag Navy captain, and for a moment, he felt this meeting would not only be his first but perhaps the most difficult he might ever face.
But enough about what might happen, he thought. From across the table, he saw the Master Adept dip her head, and he grinned at her. If she had caught that, then good—and the hell with trying to maintain a poker face. Surely here, in these circumstances, with peers, he could be himself.
The Master Adept dipped her head again as Chairman Gramsci tapped his forefinger on the table and opened the meeting.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Chairman Gramsci said, and he looked over at the admiral. “And Admiral, please, we’d like to see the video first, if we could?”
The admiral nodded and made a couple of clicks on his tablet. They all turned to watch the big vid screen on the interior wall. Five minutes later, the vid ended, and the chairman spoke once again.
“As you saw, from somewhere, a drone ship appeared, took up an attack mode against the alien ship, and launched a tactical nuke against the alien ship. It went off—and nothing happened. The captain of the Wilson, the Ghayth space station, ordered a frigate and a cruiser to take the drone into custody, I assume, but the aliens instead somehow made the drone ship disappear. With what I’d call a quick answer to our attack—that purple lobe of color came off the alien ship’s force field, I’d say. And then nothing. But we’re not here today to work on the alien ship problem,” he said.
He looked over at the Provost guards and motioned for them to bring the prisoner closer. He was pushed by a couple of the guards and stood off to one side of the table, his hands in restraints at his waist.
I know this man, Tanner thought, and he was a poor captain—but that’s not here nor there.
Still in his captain’s uniform, Pankov stared straight ahead at attention as good as he could muster while his hands were so immobile.
“What do you have to say, Captain,” Chairman Gramsci asked politely.
The captain looked like he had an answer at the ready, and he met no eyes but spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.
“It came to our attention—Novertag’s attention, that is—that the alien ship was holding off Ghayth with no communication. It was our opinion—which we acted on—that the only way we might get these aliens to respond was to knock on their front door. Hence, the nuke—which we knew, as did all RIM Confederacy citizens, that cannot pierce a force field. The assumption was correct, and we were as surprised as you were that the aliens chose to simply destroy the drone ship. Incidentally, this is why we sent in a drone ship—an unmanned craft that risked no lives,” he said, his voice still plain with no emotion showing.
The chairman tapped on the tabletop, but he was just marking time, Tanner thought. The admiral had a look on his face that said “bullshit.” As he looked around the table, Tanner saw the same look, but a little more tempered, was also shown on the faces of the Doge, the Baroness, and the Caliph.
The only face that did not show any degree of astonishment belonged to the Master Adept, who leaned forward to speak. “Chairman, if I may ...” she began.
“Of course, Master Adept, do go on,” said Gramsci who wanted to know what the only mind reader in the room might have seen.
She nodded and then looked down at the bare burnished wood of the table in front of her. She never brought anything to a meeting, Tanner would learn, and she had pushed the empty desk pad to one side, placing her bare arms on the warm wood of the table itself.
She looked around the table. She looked up and a bit to her left at the Novertag captain, and then she smiled. “What this young man has just said to us—is absolutely true. In his mind, I see no deception nor anything but the simple fact that, yes, this was his mission and his alone. He did this, the drone came from the NN Drozir, and he himself, as the captain, went ahead with this attemp
t to ‘knock on their front door’ on his own. What he did not think of nor consider was that the aliens might have visited their revenge on all the ships in front of them—rather than the drone alone. That I find to be a considerable lack of experience and judgment in a navy officer. But blame lies only at his feet—not with Novertag,” she finished, and that put a silence over the room once more.
The admiral shifted in his seat. “If I was your admiral, you’d be court-martialed and sent to the brig,” he said.
“In the Caliphate, your sentence would be longer and the lashes longer still,” the Caliph added.
Heads nodded in the room, and the chairman called a halt to the discussion. “Then, for the record, we the executive committee of the RIM Confederacy Council find no blame to be assigned to our member, Novertag. However, we will include the minutes of this meeting when we turn over the captain to his ship under arrest and send him back to his realm. We also would like to thank the Master Adept for her ... her ... her adept ability and the fact that she was willing to share this as well with the committee. Kudos, ma’am,” he finished off, and he slapped the tabletop as there appeared to be no gavels present. Not that he needed one, with such a small group, Tanner noted.
Going down the escalator, somehow the Master Adept ended up just one step above Tanner’s spot, and she leaned forward to say very quietly in his ear, “Duke—could I ask that we meet in person sometime in the next few days? I know that being a Royal and now in charge of a six-planet realm is an impossible task for many to even countenance. And I’d like to talk to you, please, about these aliens—can we agree to try to schedule that meeting ...”
He was looking out the huge windows on the side off to his right, and he made no outward sign he had heard the whispered query, but he nodded.
She patted him on the shoulder, and they went down the escalator almost together.
Something is up, he thought, and that got him another pat on the shoulder from the Master Adept.
#####
Major Stal was anything but slow. His forty-yard dash was still a record standing from those years ago at the Marine Academy on Neres. He wasn’t as good at hurdles as his big thighs were not meant to be turned sideways as much as was considered good form—but today, it didn’t seem to matter.
Holding a series of combat readiness tests here on Ghayth was always a good thing. Holding them at the new naval base might have been better—but as he was on station at the alien wreck in the far southern continent, he’d simply adapted his location to suit his needs.
He’d had the various pieces of equipment flown in. There was an enormous wall with rope assists hanging from the top. Bit spools of barbed wire had been slowly uncoiled and stapled to the logs that had been freshly cut from the trees that lay near the beach. There were the standard sixty-pound packs, all exactly the same and oddly balanced, to provide a real burden on his men who were going to take the tests today.
He’d personally checked the five-mile course. It ran through the deep jungle on one side, across the sand bar that stretched out and into those woods from the beach, across two small creeks, and then, for a whole mile almost, it went upstream on the stream that had an uneven and rocky bottom.
While he had awarded the COR—Chief of Race—credentials to a lieutenant, he still took some pride as the course itself was going to be long at seven miles in total, challenging, and tough.
“Should make for some interesting times,” he said to himself as he ran the pre-testing course himself. As he hoisted his leg once again, up and over the hurdles made from the foot-wide branches of the trees around the course and dragged into place, he grunted. Good time up front in the crawl part, under the barbed wire for the two hundred yards. Check.
He’d slowed a bit on the first run. The sand bar area, while only four hundred yards, was a real bitch to run on; the sand was so loosely packed that it was tough to try to run with any degree of speed. He’d bogged down, but then he knew all of the racers today would do the same, and he mentally checked off the next task on the course.
After that came the wall, and trying to spring from the sand at the wall’s base was a non-working proposition. What he’d realized, as he’d jumped and had fallen five feet short each time, was that he—and the racers to follow—would need to adapt. He went off to the side of the large thirty-foot wall. He ran at it obliquely and then got two good footfalls on the wall itself as his hand stretched up and up. Yes! I have the rope! He quickly let his body swing with the lateral movement he’d just used, and then he twisted to face the wall and went up hand over hand on the rope to the top. He swung over and slid down the smooth side to the ground below. That would make some of them frustrated, but if I can figure it out—so should they. Check.
He sprung ahead. The pack on his back was still weighted more on the left side, and it rode on his left kidney badly, but he grinned as he jammed a hand beneath same and rubbed his scraped skin beneath the hard canvas bag. He used his right hand to hoist the right shoulder strap up a bit, and that got the bag a bit more off center, and he was able to bear the discomfort a bit easier.
“Five miles,” he said to himself, and he settled into his quickest pace for that distance. Ahead of him, the course had been marked with dye, a nice bright orange color, to lead him and the racers to follow along the path.
First was the meadow before the woods as he left the wall and beach area behind him. He ran, his feet pounding on the grass, and he was careful to look ahead where each footstep would land. One thing he didn’t want to do was to twist an ankle in a hole or an animal burrow.
At the end of the meadow, he turned as the dye markers showed to his left, and he followed a slowly dropping hill down to the bottom of a ravine. Huge trees—the xeno team had dubbed them mushroom trees because they looked like gigantic fifty-foot tall mushrooms, lay ahead, and some over the years, had fallen too. He picked his way the best that he could through the course, and after more than two hundred yards, he reached the bottom of the ravine.
He pounded right through the brook. He slipped a bit on one step. Must mention to my COR that footing in water cannot be counted on. Check.
He rose up the other side of the ravine, and the sounds of leaves and forest detritus crushed beneath his feet as he climbed the far side of the ravine. At the top, the orange markings led still farther on to the left. He ran, keeping his attention on the course itself and nowhere else until a thunderous sound rising up from behind him distracted him, and the pain in his ears was actually sharp.
He grunted and clapped hands over his ears, but the sound did not dissipate at all. He slowed and as the sound behind him increased even more, he fell to his knees, shaking his head to try to rid himself of the pain of such a pure single note of painful sound.
He was unable to give himself even a small degree of comfort, and he knew his eyes were tearing up, and his ears—or maybe it was just his brain—were ringing so loudly in sync with that note that the resonance was almost more than he could stand.
He forced himself to stand, letting go of his ears, as the sound could not be blocked. He stumbled forward and turned around to face the alien wreck a couple of miles away from him on the beach. He broke into a trot to return.
Something had happened back there. His teeth were so clenched he had to breathe through his nose, and that was hard as he had trouble getting enough air to feed his muscles.
He knew he should count the number of steps he took to try to determine just how far ‘out’ he was from the wreck. After twenty-three steps, the sound stopped, and he collapsed in a heap in the dried leaves and undergrowth. He rolled over on his side, shook for a moment, and then forced himself up onto his knees. Sweat poured down his brow; more sweat than he’d generated from running the course so far. His muscles felt loose and yet shaky. His eyes were dry—he’d cried out more tears than he’d ever done before, and he nodded to himself as he took stock of his body.
“Able to stand. Check,” he said to himself as he ro
se. “Able to walk, maybe to jog, back to the temporary marine tent base located beside the huge alien wreck. Check,” he said, adding to his mental list as he began to walk and then jog.
As he moved toward the wreck, he continued to count the steps. At seven hundred and forty-six, he crested the rise to the right of the course below, and he jogged down the final hill to the beach and the wreck.
There had been some degree of competency. His second in command, Captain Pratt, was out in the field beside the large tent village where the marines were encamped at the wreck site. He was ordering some lesser ranks to carry out specific tasks, and Alver saw marines were already stationed on picket duty, each armed and at the ready. There were three personnel carriers lined up as well, and they held more marines ready to be dispatched should the need arise.
Good, he thought, Pratt’s on top of things.
As he ran up and bent over, catching his breath, Captain Pratt acknowledged him and brought him up to speed. “Sir—glad to see you’re okay. From what we know and have learned, twenty-one minutes ago, the wreck all of a sudden powered up—least that’s what we’re calling it. From inside in the rear, there was a sound—a huge single note of a hum—that was more than—well, Sir, more than most of us could stand. We have multiple casualties, Sir—all knocked out by that hum note.
“Just to let you know, that note was exterior only—the full xeno team and their small squad of marines inside the ship heard nothing. They were not affected at all—but they did pour out with the news that inside the ship, things were all of a sudden lighting up. Turned on, Professor Reynolds was shouting, the ship had been turned on.
“Out here, though, as we were mostly up at the testing course, which is about a mile thataway,” Pratt said as he pointed back and to the left somewhat, “so the marines here were the ones that were badly affected. We have nineteen marines in sickbay, Sir—with as yet no diagnosis,” he finished off.
